


Spelling it Out

by Higgystar



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Gen, prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-10
Updated: 2015-09-10
Packaged: 2018-04-20 00:59:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4767614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Higgystar/pseuds/Higgystar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl cannot read.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spelling it Out

“No pictures?”

Andrea had snickered at him when he’d asked, her small mouth turned up in a gentle smile as he’d flicked through the pages of the book she’d brought him. He knew what it was, not really a book so much as a peace offering between them and he’s more than willing to calm her fears. It’s not that he’s a forgiving person by nature, but he’s smart enough to know that there was no malice in her actions; only a want to protect the group. He can live with that.

So she laughs, he smiles and acts as if they’re sharing a joke as he sets the book aside, merely making a mockery of the dumbass redneck stereotype he knows the group had of him at first. They had learned soon enough, he’d proven them wrong, even Andrea herself had given him a nod of approval after he’d proven her wrong at the Vatos hideout. Maybe he was still stubborn, and maybe his temper was still as hair-trigger as ever, but at least they knew he wasn’t dumb.

Least they didn’t think so anyway.

It’s not that he considers himself stupid. Not really. He knew a lot of stuff, it just was different stuff that everyone else knew. Daryl knew how to skin a squirrel in ten seconds, he knew how to survive for nine days off of berries and rainwater in the woods, he knew how to use old newspapers to layer under your clothing to keep warm in the winter. Maybe his education wasn’t conventional, maybe it was one learned from a necessity to survive, but it was an education all the same. He wasn’t smart sure, but he wasn’t dumb either.

People just didn’t always understand that.

Their world used to be all about grades. Everyone was marked and judged by the same scale instead of being valued for their individual skills. He knows he’s not an idiot, Daryl knows he’s not a genius either, but he’s somewhere in the middle, somewhere average. Thing is people only ever judged on the letters and grades they saw on report cards and exams and the like, and he just didn’t have any. He’d gone to school when he was little, or he’d started at least but he’d never been interested in it all, and between his lack of care and everything else happening outside of school, he’d just stopped going.

It wasn’t like his dad ever cared where he was, wasn’t like he was ever wanting him to get an education or anything. He remembers his father scoffing over contestants in quiz shows, Daryl sitting on the floor as his father had sneered and called them all book smart but not street smart. Bunch of assholes spending too much time reading and not enough time living he’d used to say. It wasn’t that Daryl thought his father was right, heck if anything he’d learnt over the years that he was mostly wrong, but when it’s all you hear for years on end, and there was nobody pushing him to go to school, in the end it just all came to one point.

Daryl had never learnt to read.

He knew his name. If nothing else he could sign for stuff. Even if it was mainly a squiggle, scratched onto paper and barely readable, it was his name. Merle had taught him, his brother could kind of read, Merle had gone to school for a bit, when their mom had been alive at least. So Merle knew letters and the sounds they made, he had taught Daryl his name and scratched it into the dirt with sticks. It wasn’t much, but he knew ‘D’ and he knew he had two, one for each name. There was a ‘Y’ that hung beneath the line in his first name, but sometimes it got mixed up with the other letters and went into the wrong place. The ‘X’ had been easy, like what pirates used to mark treasure on a map, right in the middle of Dixon. The other letters sometimes fell into the wrong places, but he knew his name, knew it enough to write it down and sign whatever he needed and be sure it was his.

Everything else was kind of difficult to get. There were words everywhere and they just didn’t make any sense to him. He knows he’d tried when he was little, could sing the alphabet song and sound out letters kind of. But then he’d been told it wasn’t important. His dad barking for him to shut up, beer bottles thrown at him, and when the rest of his day had been spent keeping quiet enough to avoid his father’s fists, the alphabet suddenly didn’t matter anymore. Then he hadn’t practised and he hadn’t cared, so the sounds got lost somewhere behind him. Instead his focus had shifted to surviving, avoiding his dad’s anger and learning which berries he could eat without getting sick. There wasn’t any time for alphabets and learning how to hold a pen properly, instead he’d just been left to survive and there were more important lessons to learn.

Not that their backwoods, redneck, little town cared. He carried the surname of Dixon and he was dead to them long before he was old enough to understand why. When you had that kind of reputation preceding you, nobody really expected much anyway. He could talk, could fight, could shout and swear and spit and when it came down to it, that’s all he had needed to get by. Grades meant jack shit when you knew there was no escape from the life that had been laid out before you.

Grades and education were for other people, people who were going to have jobs in suits and with files and get married and have the perfect two kids with a dog and the white picket fence around the yard. Dixons didn’t need education because that wasn’t their future. It had frustrated him at times sure, when there were kids able to read shit when he couldn’t, when people would assume they knew him as soon as they’d figured it all out. Like he was dumb, like he was a nothing and never gonna amount to jack shit because he couldn’t read. But who gave a shit really?

Because when the infection spread, people like him and Merle were still alive and strong, where those supposed clever people were dead. Fancy grades and degrees didn’t help them none when the walkers started biting. So he doesn’t care, not really because he could save his own ass and other people’s and he had T-Dog and Carol and heck most of their group thanking him for saving them all. He’s been doing just fine without knowing how to read, never needed it then, never needed it now.

So why does he feel so worried about them finding out?

Daryl works hard for the group, doing his best to use his skills to their advantage, hunting them out food, taking down walkers and making sure that those that need to be protected are safe. But they’re slowly growing closer as a group. Despite their differences and what had happened to Merle, he’s getting along with them all, and he figures that maybe it’s not the worst group to have fallen into. They work as a team, they do what needs to be done and if they can get the farm secure enough he figures maybe they’d be able to settle here.

But when they start to get closer it means they start to talk about things not related to survival and that’s where he starts to fall down. Because he can talk about keeping the perimeter safe, he can drag a deer into camp and show them how to gut it and dress it, but when they talk about what had been considered ‘normal’ back before, it makes him remember how normal for them was strange for him. He hated that. It’s like he’d missed out of so much and never even fucking known about it.

This morning they’re talking about pets that got left behind in the chaos, about work colleagues and extended family members that they lost contact with, and how woe is them, they’ll never get that promotion they’d been working towards back then. It makes him scoff and ignore them all, working on stringing up more alarms and focussing on the now instead of the past. He doesn’t have time for all this bullshit, just because he didn’t fit then didn’t mean he couldn’t fit now, and it’s taking time, it’s not easy for him, but he’s trying and that has got to count for something.

It’s only when there is talk of someone going on a run that he perks up and actually starts to listen, because he doesn’t mind going on runs and being useful, plus it means he gets to take a break from all these people. They’re trying to play nice with the farmer and his people, so when he sees Glenn take a sheet of paper from the farmer’s daughter he’s banging, he figures now would be a decent time to let his interest be known.

Stepping up he nods to the Asian kid, crossbow in hand and ready to get it set on the bike to go on a run. “I can take someone else on the bike with me. Saves on fuel for the cars and the horses only attract more walkers.” He explains with a shrug nodding to the bike as the kid looks to him.

Glenn laughs a little, grin caught on his lips as he holds out the paper for Daryl to see the words written on it. To him they’re nothing more than squiggles. He knows a few of the letters but some of them he can’t tell unless they’re printed, people’s handwriting made it harder to work it all out. Daryl doesn’t get why he’s laughing, figures it must be something written there, but heck he hasn’t got a fucking clue. Reaching up he chews on his thumbnail with a loose shrug and it seems to be enough for Glenn to think he gets the joke, because thankfully the kid soon tells him as if they’re both in on it. “The bike, for this stuff? Daryl we’re gonna need a car and at least three people to go for it all.”

He nods, shuffles in place for a bit but the kid doesn’t seem to notice anything about it. “Alright, so who else is coming with me?”

Riding in the back of the truck while Rick and Shane sit up front makes it feel like old times again. Being the youngest always meant he got the short straw, and there had been multiple times that he’d sat in the back bed of the truck and got to experience a bumpy ride to wherever the hell Merle and his dad had decided to go. So it doesn’t bother him at all, he’s pretty good at resting back against the cab and watching the road pass him by.

The place they hit isn’t even really a town, more like a small suburb, a cluster of homes and corner stores that had made up a little community out here in the farming part of the state. It’s nice enough, but empty, a dead shell left for them to scrape clean for supplies. Hopping off the back he keeps his bow close, noting that Rick and Shane do the same as they head to the first house to hit. They know how this goes, one house at a time, don’t bite off more than you can chew and keep the noise down. As soon as it’s clear they’re backing the truck right up to the door, and Daryl is ready to get hunting for things.

“So what’re we looking for?”

“Besides the usual stuff it’s everything on this list.” Rick shrugs, looking over the piece of scrap paper, Shane doing the same over his shoulder. He feels a little more awkward than usual since he knows the two of them are having some kind silent fight over who was banging Lori. Heck he doesn’t much care about it all, but the tension is enough to get him fidgeting in place as he awaits his answer. To his surprise Rick is holding out the list to him, waving it a little until he snags it between his fingers, glancing over the ink and then back up at Rick. “We split up, it’s a big place, I’ll hit the basement, Shane you go upstairs, Daryl you’ve got this floor. Need a hand with any of the bigger items, don’t shout, come get help, we don’t wanna be drawing in any walkers if we don’t have to.”

Before he can even think of opening his mouth, the other men are heading off, leaving him clutching a piece of crumpled paper between his fingers and feeling the familiar swoop of anxiety knot in his stomach. Only this time he’s not on edge because walkers could be nearby, he’s worried because they hadn’t told him what the needed. The answer was in his hand, right there written on the fucking paper but it was like a damned code that he can’t work out. It gets him worked up, because as always the easiest way for him to react is to be fucking pissed off at it all.

Moving into the kitchen he slams the paper onto the sideboard, palm flat on top of it, obscuring the stupid words and helping him let out some of the frustration over it all. They hadn’t fucking told him, Rick had just given him the fucking list and he and Shane had read it enough to memorise it all. Now here he was, left standing like a fool with no idea what the fuck he’s meant to be grabbing for them all. The usual stuff is easy, canned food and anything with a long shelf life is obvious, but all of that fits inside the backpack he’s got, and he knows Glenn has said the stuff on the list couldn’t be transported on his bike.

Leaning on the kitchen counter he pins the list between his hands, frames it as the point of his focus and tries to breathe. Daryl knows he knows some letter, and how hard could it be to work out a few fucking words? He could speak, could swear, could make all the right sounds he needed, now he just needed to find where those sounds went in relation to the squiggles before him. It couldn’t be that fucking hard to work out what they needed.

Taking a deep breath he tries to focus on the scribbled ink, tries to take it all one-step at a time. If fucking kids could get this down then he should be a fucking natural if he actually applies himself and tries. He knows he ain’t stupid, so surely it’ll all just fall into place for him. First step, work with what he knows.

He knows D. D is a letter he’s very familiar with, both big and little forms, so he trails a finger over the paper and hunts them down. There are a few and he knows the sounds they should make so at least that’s one thing. But they’re all scattered about in lots of different places, next to other letters he’s not so sure about. Okay maybe working with one letter wasn’t going to work so good.

So he instead covers the rest of the paper, letting just the first word show, the top squiggle, the first bit of ink so it had to be important, plus it was even underlined. He knows there ain’t no X there, no cross to buried treasure hidden in it all. Okay so one letter down, twenty-five to go. It makes him groan in frustration and he has to close his eyes and just try not to tear the fucking paper to shreds. Why was this so fucking difficult?

Maybe he needed it to be made even smaller for him to get started? Tongue between his teeth he covers up the majority of the word, hiding everything else from his vision so he can only see the first letter. It’s not joined up like the rest of the ink, it’s on it’s own so it’s a good place to begin. Okay, he knew his name, knew the letters in that so he should check them off, narrow down his search. Fuck this is giving him a headache.

Scanning the kitchen he spies a pen pot and grabs at it, snatching up a pencil and the nearby notebook so he can get started. There is movement around him, the sound of Shane stomping about upstairs, Rick heading up and down the basement steps to get things to the front door and into the truck. He ignores them and focuses on what he’s doing, he can remember teachers always scolding him for letting his mind wander when he had attended school as a little kid, so it must be important to stay focussed.

He doesn’t really know how to hold a pencil properly, not like other people do, but he does well enough to have it ready above the paper, ready to write. It takes some concentration, his tongue peeking out between his teeth as he leans over the paper, digging the lead in to make the marks he knows spell out his name. It’s not tidy, not straight, kind of looks a bit like it’s falling over and he’s sure people don’t normally have that much space between each letter, but it’s fine because he knows for sure that that’s his name he’s written. No denying that.

Thing is, none of his badly drawn letters match the one he’s trying to figure out.

That makes him swear, pulling back and away from the stupid piece of damned paper and stomping across the kitchen floor to try and get some of the anger out. It can’t be this fucking hard to figure it out! He knows he’s not fucking stupid, he knows that everybody else in the fucking world can do this as easy as breathing, so why does it have to be so damned hard for him? Normally it’s no big problem, their lives didn’t revolve around this at all, but for other people they never even noticed it. So they could look at road signs and know they were heading in the right direction. They can read the instructions on canned food and know how to make it taste good. They can understand fucking lists of fucking items that they needed to fucking get, because they could all fucking read and he fucking can’t!

It makes him want to punch something, but there is nothing in here that wouldn’t break his knuckles if he did hit it. He can’t be doing with Hershel looking at him with that knowing look, the old man giving a sigh of understanding that makes Daryl feel uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of it. So he refrains, folds his arms across his chest and grasps at his upper arms, some kind of half hug, half grasp that gets some of the tension out of his shoulders and jaw. The fucking pieces of paper sit innocently on the countertop, mocking him silently.

“Daryl? You find anything in here?”

He freezes when he hears Rick’s voice, his stupid emotions going and leaving him deaf to his surroundings. Here he stands, middle of the kitchen, clearly pissed off, and Rick can see all of that, as well as the empty backpack and list of items still on the sideboard. Fuck it’s obvious he hasn’t even been looking, none of the cupboards are open, and usually he’s tossed useless things aside to check right to the back. Rick knows his way of searching and he’s sure the other man is probably wondering what the fuck he’s been doing for the past few minutes.

Clearing his throat, Daryl tries to hide his awkwardness, chewing on his thumbnail and giving a loose shrug. “Not yet.” He figures that’s honest enough for the time being, and he moves to begin going through the cupboards, checking dates on tins and hiding himself from the other man’s view as much as possible.

“Really?” Rick is asking, that light tone to his voice that’s almost mocking, almost accusing. Daryl ducks himself down a little more. “I’d have thought most of the list would have been in here.”

Again he shrugs, tries to hide his lack of knowledge with a gruff attitude. It’s a tactic that has worked for him for years. “Yeah well, maybe if I had more help I’d have found it all by now.” He grumbles.

It’s a testament to Rick’s character that he doesn’t react to his attitude. The man is a peacekeeper at heart and he doesn’t jump in for a fight at all, instead when Daryl glances over his shoulder to look his way, he can see Rick nod with a small smile. “Alright, basement’s pretty much cleared out anyway.” He explains and Daryl’s thinks he can probably get away with no problems between them if Rick doesn’t look at what he’s searching for.

“Upstairs is done too. Nothing but personal items, nothing we can really use.”

Great now Shane was here to complete the party. Just what he needed. The other man joins them in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, clearly already having taken things out to the truck for them all. It makes Daryl’s stomach clench in worry when Shane decides to head over and reread over the list, holding it between his fingers and scanning down it. Of course the other man notices the notepad beside it, his untidy scratch of carefully written letters leaping out the page to be noticed.

“What’s this? You writing yourself a name badge or something Daryl?” Shane asks him, talking across the room and of course bringing Rick in on what he’s found. It makes him tense up a little, shoulders tight, fingers curling into fists easily, a natural reaction he’s had through his whole life.

“Or somethin’.” He answers back. Voice stern, clipped, no room for conversation. Usually it works with people, but Shane is one of those cocky bastards that is always in the right and fuck Daryl knows he’s not going to let it drop.

“Fuck man you write worse than Hershel, and he’s got the veterinarian equivalent of a doctor’s scrawl.” Shane shakes the list in emphasis with a chuckle. “Think you might need to start taking those lessons with Carl man. Get Lori and Carol to teach you to write better.”

Whatever patience he has left snaps in a second, making him back out from the cupboard he’s raiding and turn to face Shane properly. He may be a lot of things, but scared isn’t one of them, and if Walsh wants a fight then he’s getting one. “Hey fuck you man!” He’s barking, moving, getting up in the other man’s face and he can see the second that Shane moves into aggressor mode. They’re up in each other’s space, Shane is widening his stance and readying for a fight and Daryl knows he’s about ready to fucking brawl if he has to. Even if his track record with taking down both cops isn’t brilliant. “You don’t know shit about me!”

Before he can even swing Rick is there, grabbing at his upper arms, Shane is moving with his partner to keep him from starting something and he’s squirming, trying to get the fuck away from their grip and let them knows they don’t know him. He’s volatile, struggling to get away, still seething, bouncing on the spot to get the worked up energy out as he barks at the other man. Shane is still pissed, glaring back at him, but he’s not pointing and getting up in his face, instead he looks confused as he continues to snarl.

“You don’t know fucking shit you damned cop! People like you ain’t never gonna know nothin’ ‘bout me, never fuckin’ understand where I come from.” Daryl growls, Rick’s arms move to wrap around his arms and chest, keeping him from lashing out and Shane is there helping. “You all don’t know shit! Fuck you, so what if I ain’t smart? Never been good at no book shit or whatever, but least I know how to fuckin’ survive. You people would all been dead without me, starvin’ with walkers gnawin’ on your ass if I hadn’ta been there to string up alarms for ya.”

“Daryl, calm down-“

“No! Fuckin’ sick of you people lookin’ at me like I ain’t shit.” He bites back at Rick, his hair is long enough to get in his eyes now and that only makes him snarl even more. He’s been on edge for long enough, the outcast of the group, the one they all are unsure of, and it’s all been brought up to this ugly moment. “Maybe I am just some dumb redneck, but I’m gonna survive this a damn lot easier than you city slickers. So what if I ain’t smart, least I’m not too busy fighting over a piece of tail to focus on surviving.” Daryl snaps.

They don’t let go of him, both men keep him in their grip, strong and binding to stop him from hurting them and himself. He’s panting, trying to get away from them both, breathing heavy as they refuse to loosen their grips at all.

“Daryl, you gotta calm down man. Was just a joke. I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.” Shane tries to appease him, hand on the back of his neck, keeping him stable and under his control.

It only makes him squirm and want to be away from them more. “Fuck you.”

“Daryl stop.” Rick commands, his voice even, not angry, just in control and fuck the man really is the peacekeeper. “Shane didn’t mean to offend you, that’s his version of being friendly. Trust me I’ve known him all my life, been on the receiving end of a lot of it for a long time.” He tries to joke, tries to laugh it off and play it as nothing more than him misinterpreting it all.

It doesn’t help, only makes him feel angrier with it all. “Sick of bein’ the butt of people’s jokes. Can’t help it that I’m a dumbass, would change it if I could.” He mutters, but he is calming down enough not to want to smack Shane right in the mouth. There is still anger there, but it’s not boiling over anymore at least. There is a pause, he squirms a little and they loosen their grip when it’s obvious he’s not trying to fight anymore.

”Shane didn’t call you a dumbass.”

Thinking back over it, maybe Shane hadn’t called him stupid or a dumbass. Maybe he’d been so damned on edge about it all that he’d snapped at the slightest provocation. Daryl knew his temper could get the best of him sometimes, but heck he’d been trying so hard to become a part of the group, it was inevitable that he was going to have to let all the stress out sometime soon. It had all mixed with his own insecurities and now here he was, looking like a volatile redneck that they probably shouldn’t let near the people they care about.

Finally, when he’s clearly not going to snap again, they let him go and Daryl immediately begins making his way outside to be alone. “Whatever.” He mutters, annoyed at himself for being so volatile. “I’ll keep watch.”

He’s left to calm down thankfully and by the time Rick and Shane have filled up the truck with the supplies he’s feeling kind of ashamed at his outburst. He hadn’t meant to snap, but people always looked at him as an idiot anyway, sometimes he hated proving them right. Of course he helps get everything secure and before he can climb back in the bed of the truck for the ride back, Shane is taking his place, gesturing for him to join Rick up front.

It’s not that he’s worried, but he’s cautious as he settles into the passenger seat, staring out the window with his crossbow in his lap as Rick begins driving them home. He knows there has to be a reason for the switch up, and he’s proven right not a few moments later. Rick keeps his eyes on the road and he’s grateful for that small favour at least.

“Everything left on the list to get was in the kitchen. Me and Shane found it all pretty easily.” Daryl doesn’t answer, he just waits because he figures it really must have been easy for them to figure it all out, especially after his little outburst. “Seemed like it was all in places you would have already looked in.” Rick points out, and Daryl rests his head against the side, watches the world go by. “Unless you didn’t know what you were looking for.”

He doesn’t bother to show he’s even heard Rick. Instead he just lets his fingers fidget with the strap of the crossbow, watching the broken lines on the side of the road.

“We would have helped if you’d have told us Daryl.” Rick points out and Daryl isn’t sure if that makes it better or worse. To be pitied and seen as needing help when he’d become so used to fighting his battles all by himself. “You just had to tell us your couldn’t read and we would have helped out.”

Daryl doesn’t know why Rick’s trying to be so nice about it all. It’s not something to be proud of, he knows he should be ashamed of himself, because it was something that everybody else on the planet could do. But when it came to his list of priorities, learning to read and write was just very low on it. Way beneath avoiding his father’s wrath, finding food, scrounging money and trying just to survive one more fucking day. He grunts in answers, nothing more than a noise to at least let Rick know he’s listening to him. He supposes it’s only polite.

“Shane didn’t say that shit in there because he thinks you’re stupid.” Rick points out. “None of us think that Daryl. We don’t.” He grunts again if only to get Rick to stop repeating himself. “Stuff like that doesn’t mean shit now anyway. And you know way more about survival than all of the rest of us put together.” He supposes that’s true, heck he knows it’s true, but it’s kind of nice for Rick to mention it. So he shrugs, but he knows maybe he should say something.

“Just didn’t have time for school is all.” He mumbles, knows that Rick can barely hear him, but the other man doesn’t mention it anyway. “Weren’t important.” Because it really wasn’t. Not when he was a kid and spent most nights going to bed hungry, bruised and wondering if he was going to wake up to the power being cut off again.

He can see Rick nod in his peripheral vision, the man steady as always as he drives them back to the farm. “It’s not important. It’s not who you are Daryl.” Rick points out and Daryl gives a halfhearted shrug in response. “We ain’t gonna be thinking of you any differently just because we know, and we ain’t gonna be telling anybody neither. Not if you don’t want us to.”

Honestly he’d not been expecting that. He’d have thought once they found out they would be spreading it all to the group to have something in this world to laugh about. But Rick sounds so sincere to him, so honest and there is a trustworthiness to this man that he’s never felt with anybody before. “Appreciate it.” He replies, turning to meet Rick’s eyes, to share a nod with him and know that the other man was speaking the truth.

Maybe he doesn’t fit into the group just yet, maybe there is still a lot about their previous lives that are too different to make it easy. But it’s not like they didn’t have the time to make it work. Least if Rick and Shane were willing to accept this piece of himself that he’s hidden from everybody else for so long, they’d probably accept the rest of him too. It’ll be slow work, but maybe if he just keeps on trying, keeps a better cap on his temper and tries to actually talk and share with these people, he can have a future with them.

Wasn’t like he didn’t have the time to try.


End file.
